Hi there, just joined. Hoping someone will have a clue about this as its very puzzling to say the least.  I have here the 8141L AKA VGN-AW220J a huge 18" laptop 2ghz beast...would be great to get it going since all my other lappies are broken in one way or the other (bad luck i guess)

Started out a lady brought this to me along with another laptop to repair for a friend of hers. Actually there was nothing wrong with the laptop...i installed windows xp and rebooted it a few times to make sure it was reliable and all good. I really didnt wanna give it back cuz it was such a nice laptop, compared to anything i OWNED (maybe some of you computer techs know what its like to always be fixing stuff thats better than what you got for people who can afford anything, it SUX!!)  Anyway....some one or two weeks later she brought it back to me again said her friend was using it and all the sudden it wouldnt work. Well....im thinking it got dropped or surged or something because usually computers dont just go belly up for no reason.

anyway, so it powers on but there is no CD tray activity (when bootable cd is inside like knoppix)....no display....external monitor doesnt work,  keyboard completely unresponsive....and whats most curious is there is a light near the bezel with a padlock and a one inside it thats lit and wont go off no unless i turn off the computer. I think this computer has discrete graphics and probably INTEGRATED as well but not sure....but the fact that the keyboard is completely unresponsive is very troubling....


any ideas? thanks in advanced!

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Topic Closed.i forgot to mention that with the bottom place off and having access to the motherboard i can feel some small amount of heat from the processor, graphics chip, and southbridge......the cooling fan turns on shortly after the laptop powers on. I do not know how to do a continuity test or electrical test on the mobo with a multimeter...though I DO have a multimeter if i could find some resources online that could show me the various points on the mobo to test.  Any ideas?  Here is a recent pic of the motherboard with the cooling fan removed.  I am not 100 PERCENT sure but it looks like there might be a small chip in the graphics core...but not totally sure. Does anyone know how much needs to be chipped off before the processor doesnt work anymore? I hate these exposed core processors for that reason...everytime you remount the cooler assembly if uneven pressure is applied you RUN the risk of chipping off a tiny piece of the corner!!! BAH!

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